Rule of Law and Large Firms Concentration in Southeast Europe

Aleksandar Todorov ()
Additional contact information
Aleksandar Todorov: University of Economics Ð Varna

Bulgarian Economic Papers from Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski - Bulgaria // Center for Economic Theories and Policies at Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on regularities concerning the relationship between the rule of law and economic concentration. We use panel data on the largest companies in ten countries in Southeast Europe between 2009 and 2021 to assess the impact of the rule of law on aggregate concentration, that is, the share of the largest companies in total economic activity. Using fixed-effects panel models and an instrumental variables approach, we find that improvements in the rule of law are associated with greater economic concentration. This finding is consistent with previous research on institutional development and firmsÕ performance in Eastern Europe. It suggests that improvements in the rule of law benefit existing export-oriented companies and that policy efforts should be focused on smaller, start-up firms.

Keywords: institutions; corruption; economic power; size distribution of firms; large companies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 E02 L11 O43 P37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2023-10, Revised 2023-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://uni-sofia.bg/index.php/eng/content/downloa ... file/BEP-2023-06.pdf First version, 2023 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sko:wpaper:bep-2023-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bulgarian Economic Papers from Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski - Bulgaria // Center for Economic Theories and Policies at Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Prof. Teodor Sedlarski ().